The Jisatsu Experiment
by IHKF
Summary: Years after Conan leaves with no explanation and Haibara becomes a distant Miyano Shiho, Ayumi heads as far away from Tokyo as she can get. She finds it hard to leave Conan and Haibara behind, but the mystery she's about to take on is going to begin unraveling a past she'd repressed, and Shinichi may have to step in.
1. Prologue: Himura University

Things had changed over the years- not by a lot, not all at once, but little by little.

The Detective Boys never disbanded, nobody moved, nobody died, but Ran got her own place after she graduated. Kogoro's detective agency grew, and he had a few interns here and there that ran their time and carried on like clockwork. Eri had moved back in, though the two weren't sleeping in the same bed again (not that they ever said, no, Ayumi had merely made the guess because there was a warmth that wasn't quite there yet). Shinichi-niisan and Heiji-niisan were still best friends; Sonoko and Kazuha and Ran and Sera, they all hung out, had girl's nights. Haibara (MIyano? Shiho? Ai?) would join them when she wasn't working on something with the professor (who she still lived with, who was still like a father to her). Mitsuhiko found the time to balance the Detective Boys and the Science Club- he was their president, after all, got Teitan High further than it ever had gone before in the finals despite the lacking company. Genta was still their club's strong arm, though what was once body fat was now muscle and height. He towered over most boys in their school by their first year, scared a few third-years back when. His love for food had been channeled into a love of cooking, his hobby when he wasn't solving a case or manhandling criminals. Conan had disappeared. That was that. She'd come to accept it. It still broke her heart.

Ayumi, she felt alone these days. Genta and Mitsuhiko were still there but…

Genta had a girlfriend now, small and sweet and every bit a cook as him, though her skills strayed in the area of sweet-making. Mitsuhiko would deny it until he was blue (Haibara had hurt him, hurt him so bad, and Ayumi was the only one who understood because she'd felt it too, and that pain held him back, more than he let on, and Ayumi supposed he kept it all in while she only mourned to herself) but there was a cute girl with big glasses and a sincere smile who was always looking at him. (He liked her, Ayumi could tell, but he wasn't taking that plunge and she didn't blame him).

She was the only girl left in the Detective Boys, and the only member left who had no other hobbies- well, she dabbled in makeup as homage to a memory long past, but it was nothing she spent time on. She sorted through and selected cases, she gathered information, she put clues together as much as she could until she had Mitsuhiko's and Genta's help. The days passed, and though each hour took three to pass, she could tell the years were moving quickly, so quickly that it would almost seem right-on-time if she were to receive a letter from Conan. But she didn't. He'd left them a note and hadn't said goodbye, just that he'd be in touch but he never was. She shouldn't have been surprised, not after the fifth empty year (that's what she told herself when she started crying for no reason after a case, when she'd hide away in the bathroom for a few minutes because only Sato would see her there and know, and nobody else needed to see, nobody needed to worry, she was fine, she was fine).

Shinichi, kind as he was, tried to fill Conan's shoes, they could all tell. He was their self-proclaimed mentor, a friend and a protector (there was a fear in him and a fury she only saw when they were in danger, something she could never quite place). He taught them and molded them for a year before he seemed to back off, and she wondered if that was because he knew he couldn't replace Conan, or because he'd deducted that they all felt he couldn't. Besides, he was probably tied up with Ran-neechan. Last she'd heard, he'd moved into that apartment with her when she'd taken the leap from the agency. Haibara, she seemed to keep her distance. Sometimes Ayumi thought she wanted to reach out, but that outstretched hand would retract, and she would be cold again, and eventually it stopped killing her that she wouldn't (no it didn't, she was just used to it, expected it; Mitsuhiko wasn't there yet).

Ayumi was a social butterfly, but butterflies hardly ever stayed in one place, and she flitted from one group to another without ever truly belonging, just long enough to know names and faces. This was why she and Mitsuhiko were so alike, she'd shut down, too.

Come their third year, Ayumi was closing cases all on her own. Mitsuhiko and Genta came when she called, but she tried not to (she was scared that eventually they wouldn't come). She wondered if Shinichi knew all the trouble she was getting up to (she wondered if he cared- why? Why did it matter if he cared?) He had to hear about it through the police, or deduce that it was her from the nameless papers drawn up hours after she'd closed her cases. She shrugged off the thought (but there were eyes in her dreams, odd ones, like a memory that she's so curious to touch but terrified to recall).

Regardless of the people and the cases and the criminals and the failures, she could put her cases on her resume, and that meant she'd get into a good university. Somewhere far away, somewhere near a beach, somewhere suburban and away from Tokyo. So she took Himura University's offer and didn't bat an eye at the distance. Her mother and father cried and fueled her packings full of microwavable food (it was enough to make the seven-year-old Genta she once knew salivate), and Mitsuhiko and Genta squeezed the daylights out of her and all three of them stood at the train and wept for an hour straight, right up until the train was making its final call and she had to go.

(Haibara and Shinichi hid a few aisles over, clutching badges they no longer wore as she cried and he pretended not to notice for her sake- and for his.)

She got set up in the dorm room easy enough. She made her bed, hung some pictures (she debated setting the frame of the Detective Boys, all five of them, on her nightstand, and instead hid it face-down in her drawer). It took a few hours for her roommate to arrive, but she was beautiful and tan and had green eyes that sparkled when she said hello. Her name was Akiko Nishimura. They shook hands and something warm started chipping away at the cold patch where Indigo used to be.

She was scouting out her semester's classrooms and got lost when she ran into Katashi Sasaki- and she nearly died when she looked into his eyes and saw Conan's. No glasses, just blue, familiar all the same. His hair was styled differently, more of a western cut and as yellow as the sun, but his face and his lips and his ears and his eyes… She dropped her books and he cocked an eyebrow at her and said "I was gonna ask if you needed help with those. Guess that answers my question." She'd gone red in the face, huffed and said:

"Thank you, I'm okay, though."

He tapped her head with her Math textbook and said: "Liar. Where are you headed?"

The rest was history.

She was studying on the second floor of the library, brushing up on her English and failing miserably when a boy sat down across from her. Brown eyes, auburn hair- a foreigner like Katashi, but less American, more European. He cracked a book open, glanced up at her, blinked, then turned his attention back to his textbook with a yawn. They didn't speak, though the uncomfortable air compelled every cell of her body to. She tried to concentrate on English, sound out a difficult word, but she kept stressing the _R_ and couldn't say the _L_. She grimaced. "I can practically hear your brain imploding. I suggest dropping the class and studying a different language." And that was the first thing Yori Smartass Sata ever said to her. She'd glared and reminded him to be polite to strangers and returned to studying. Five minutes later, he'd proclaimed himself her tutor.

Takumi Ikeda was a frail, cowardly boy who reminded her of Mitsuhiko the first summer after Haibara and Conan had left- a shut-in gamer who slept in the day and lived for the nightlife his roommate-less dorm-room afforded him. He was as pale as the moon itself, bright enough he nearly blinded her when she first saw him stumbling out of the nearby cafe with layers of bags under his eyes. Despite the lack of sleep, his face was rounded and baby-ish, cute with the round glasses that were falling off his nose. His large baggy sweater dipped over his shoulder as he passed by her with a murmur about "finishing Devil Souls". He'd dropped his wallet, and she'd spent the rest of the day deducing what dorm-room was his, determined to return the small bit of yen and the student ID she'd found inside. It'd taken her until the early evening, but she'd knocked and interrupted his playthrough of the newest Sunshine Valley RPG…. so it was only fair she stay and help him farm with the tricks she'd learned from the previous games.

She hadn't meant to stumble into the football locker rooms, she really hadn't, but the tan Osakan guy with a wide cocky grin and a mouth full of wit she wanted to stuff with his dirty socks- Youta Oshiro- didn't seem to have any intention of letting it go. She had the unfortunate luck of being in his Math class and in his English class and even free during the time she'd set aside in her schedule for lunch. "Caught you sneaking a peek earlier, ya just have to ask, ya know." He'd taken to clinging at her side, like he thought she had a crush on him or something, and it drove her up a wall. The other personalities she'd been used to, but a guy like him was new territory in an already-new situation, and she grew more disgruntled each day. He knew Akiko, apparently. Grew up in the same town, though they didn't speak much. He used it as an excuse to get closer to Ayumi, though. He ate lunch with her and flashed his muscles (which he certainly did have as the star football player, she'd admit), and he asked her questions about class (was actually kinda helpful when she didn't get something, almost symbiotic). She was starting to get attached to him, hardly fought against it when Katashi joined them. They were rivals? Or something. They butted heads, and she wagered it had something to do with Katashi's dad being a cop and Youta's being a shady lawyer with suspicious sources of information. She wasn't sure, but she was starting to feel at home (she could see Genta and Mitsuhiko going back and forth over the picnic table as Agasa Hakase settled them down).

She'd gotten calls from home a few times by the third week. Most were from her parents, who found the time to call despite their work schedules, but the occasional call from Genta or Mitsuhiko would trickle in. They asked how she was, if she'd taken up any cases, if she was making friends (great, not really, and _more than she'd thought possible_). Mitsuhiko's classes were going well, extremely so, of course, and he was confused by the attention he was getting from complete strangers (all girls, and Ayumi wondered how a boy as smart as Mitsuhiko couldn't see that the ladies were flocking to him, and wondered if maybe he was willingly ignoring it for modesty or something more painful). She'd laughed and told him to spend some time being more social; he declined initially, but she knew he'd fold. Genta was in culinary school and having the time of his life, learning new dishes, learning new tricks with knives (the thought of which made her nervous in the worst way). Neither had taken up any cases, necessarily, but the towns surrounding their schools were quiet, at least not as rambunctious as Tokyo had been. Hearing their voices was like smelling a candle that carried the scent of home, or feeling a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer. It brought tears to her eyes, and she sat on the side of her bed stifling her sobs because she didn't want Mitsuhiko or Genta to hear, didn't want them to worry because she was _fine_.

Akiko came home to find her leaning over her knees, burying her head in her hands and whimpering with the phone on _End Call_. She'd sat beside her and rubbed soothing circles into her back. "It'll get easier," (spoiler: actually, as this story unfolds, it only gets _harder_) she murmured, and "you've got friends here too" (another spoiler: some might not actually be _friends_). Ayumi leaned into her shoulder, wiping the tears from her eyes and forcing a smile. For the moment, she wasn't alone, maybe wasn't for the first time in a long time. "Hey," Akiko picked up her phone and playfully tossed it in the air for good measure, grinning at Ayumi's red-rimmed eyes. "Why don't I give Youta a call? He knows the best ice cream place and he won't tell me, but maybe he'll tell you if we guilt him with your big sad puppy eyes!"

"Akiko-chan! That's so mean!"

"Don't worry, don't worry! He owes me anyway! I did his essay last week and he still hasn't paid me."

A small bead of sweat dripped down Ayumi's head.

It took Youta only a few short minutes to arrive at their door, a scowling Katashi in toe for some reason. Ayumi didn't mind; she took it as a sign that she was meant to be with these people right now, and that was okay. Youta wrapped an arm over her shoulders and argued with Katashi about the statistics of crime in Japan and other things she had a hard time following, and Akiko clung to her other side and egged either end on like a referee who was biased (depending on who she thought was winning) and dirty. Ayumi stood, surrounded by the chaos feeling oddly serene. Whatever tears had been in her eyes before were gone, for the moment, maybe for longer, and she'd be thankful for the whirlwind she found herself at the center of right now.

She didn't notice the black car parked across the street, or the familiar eyes that haunted her dreams watching her from behind the cracked window.


	2. The Evil Witch of Himura

Katashi was ambitious, very by-the-book; he wanted to join the police force, become a detective, put away the bad guys. He almost hadn't believed her when she told him who she was, that she was a part of that little group of kids who went around foiling illegal plans ten years ago. The Detective Boys, even after Conan's departure and Ai's return to the adult world, had remained in the news for a good while. They spent summers in junior high solving cases around Japan, and Shinichi kept it no secret that he'd taken them under his wing. The Detective Boys were as much a household name as Heiji Hattori or Kaito Kid, though their individual names were little known. When they graduated to high school, that's when their name died down, (that was the year Mitsuhiko found his place at the lead of their class, the year Genta found his love for cooking). Her name stayed out of the papers. She wanted it that way. The Detective Boys were on hiatus, that's what she said. She'd flashed Katashi her badge (she held it on her person still; she told herself it was just in case). Katashi's nose wrinkled before he said "so what are you doing here?"

She didn't have the heart to tell him she was getting away from those memories.

He was a straight-A student, didn't appear to try very hard to keep it that way. He was focused on cracking a case that the police had sort of given up on- kidnapping cases, a string of them, spanning at least two decades. All children, ages one to three. No suspects, no bodies, nothing. Just a place of suspicion that'd been burned to the ground twelve years ago. They'd found bodies of hired guns, sure, but nobody important. They suspected a trafficking ring, but had never found any trail, and the kidnappings had stopped eighteen years ago. Katashi, smart as he was, couldn't find anything to open the case up again. "Those kids are still missing. They were your age, Yoshida-san. That could have been you." She resisted pointing out that it could have been him, too. The kids would be adults now, and Ayumi admitted she didn't want to think about the grim life those children had lived- assuming they had. Katashi plopped the case files on the library table, eyes looking as deep with death as Takumi's regularly did. If her face portrayed concern, he'd ignored it with a wave. "I gotta find a way to bring these sick bastards to justice."

She peeled back the first page of the folder and looked one child in its grey eyes. A school photo, black-and-white. She turned the page to find an in-color picture of an even younger child, ball in hand, reaching just far enough so that the puppy sharing the frame couldn't grip it between its small, barred teeth. "Do the police know you took this?"

Katashi's cheeks burned, and he waved her off with a snort.

That didn't answer her question, so she'd take the plausible deniability. "Why this case? If it was closed 10 years ago…"

"Trafficking rings don't just disappear, Yoshida-san. They either got better at hiding, or something even worse got to them first."

She turned the page to find photo after photo of ash, charred skulls beyond recognition, and symbols. She frowned. It was hard to see the carving under the ash, but it was an eye, egyptian-looking, eyelashes looking more like the rays of a sun, lower lid looking like a river thick with eyeliner. Claws, razor sharp, sat below and threatened to swallow the eye in their paws. She'd seen it somewhere before. "Did anything come up about these symbols carved in the floor?"

Katashi shook his head and plopped unceremoniously into the seat across from her, huffing and pouting as he leaned forward and dug his jaw into his palm. She nearly giggled at him; instead, she bit the inside of her lip and shook herself of the tickling urge. "No, a friend told me there was nothing and I didn't believe him. Did some digging myself and he wasn't kidding. No mobs, gangs, individuals, cults- anything- associated with that symbol. It's like it was a company brand or something but…"

"That would have come up in the search results."

"Especially in the police database."

"Did you," Ayumi raised an eyebrow "have clearance for that?" Katashi didn't respond, so she made a mental note. _Not as by-the-book as I thought._ She frowned and skimmed the rest of the folder. The only thing tying the kidnappings back to that burned down building was a small tuft of unburned hair belonging to one of the kidnapped, even more confusing when the body itself didn't turn up in the wreck. "Have you found anything?"

"No. That symbol doesn't show up anywhere else in this city, and I checked abandoned compounds. So if they're still here, they're well-hidden."

Ayumi frowned. She'd have to do some research herself if she was going to help him with this case. She thought about asking Haibara- Miyano- because maybe she'd know if she'd worked for that organization Conan took down before he left, but the thought left as quickly as it came. No, she wouldn't answer the call, Ayumi knew this. _Stupid_. She shook her head. "I'll do some research myself, see if my friends back home may know anything." Sato and Takagi may be able to help. Katashi's eyes leveled with hers, and he looked at her almost quizzically. He huffed into his hand, chin digging into his palm.

"Oi, Yoshida? Don't breathe a word about this to the other two, okay? I don't think that toe-haired idiot would ever let it go if he knew I asked for…" help. The word was right there, but he was too proud to say it. Ayumi didn't dare refrain, she giggled.

"Right, right, not a word to Youta-kun or Akiko-chan! And Katashi-kun?"

"Hm?" He was avoiding eye-contact with her now, taking the folder and stuffing it into his bag. She smiled to herself and placed her hand on his.

He blinked. "You can call me Ayumi-chan!" Katashi seemed to stare at her for a moment. Was he perplexed? Guilty? His eyes read something of sorrow, and she wondered if she should regret saying anything. "Ah, unless…." Her hand twitched, pulled only centimeters away, and he moved agiley to grab her by the wrist. Ayumi glanced down at their hands, then back up at Katashi. His eyes had narrowed with skepticism, or maybe it was vexation. He was hard to read, always looking like he was hiding something, always thinking, and now he seemed to be thinking about her. She only wished she knew what.

"Oi, give me a chance to respond before you get off pouting."

She blanched, nose wrinkling as she tugged her wrist back. His hand followed, grazing the thin of her arm before letting her go. She crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out, like a petulant child. "I wasn't pouting!" Yes she was, and she knew it. She was always the type to open her heart to the world despite the universe's apparent urge to squash that bit of her at random opportunity. She was just trying to be friendly. Katashi was a friend, last names didn't feel right.

"Heh," he stuck his hand in his pocket and threw his bag over his shoulder, nose in the air as he went for the staircase down. "Fine, fine. Whatever you say, Ayumi-chan…"

* * *

This ice cream was, no contest, the best she'd ever had. She didn't know how Youta found the place, or how that little old man got the chocolate of her frozen choice to be so creamy, but she found a piece of heaven on earth every time she got a perfectly rounded ball on a perfectly folded cone. Youta pointed out that she'd gotten some on her nose; she wiped it away anxiously.

They took this route on the way to class every other day, treated themselves and each other to a snack whenever they could, not that dairy and ice were all that nutritious. Youta practically insisted every time, and there was no way she could say no when he could so plainly see the drool hanging over her chin. The walk was longer than the closest route to class, but this route was better. She'd missed the company in her high school years, and Youta was nothing if not talkative. She found not a moment dull with him yammering on about football or grades or this case his dad was working on; it made her smile. Youta was smart, she could see that, if not overly sure of himself, and he was kind. He got good grades, knew how to wrap up a wound, did statistics like an actuary. He expressed no interest in following his father's footsteps, least of all in becoming a lawyer. He loved the field, the grass- the ball and the sneakers. Some evenings, she and Akiko watched Katashi and Youta sparring in an empty lawn, feet moving so fast that she could hardly see the ball until it was dead center in the bushes the boys had deemed "the goal". Youta was so alive, then, always shot her and Akiko a smile and a wink, flexed until Katashi kicked the ball right in his face. He was comfortable, warm, like the first ray of sunlight on an early morning. She eschewed his arrogance and his flirting, but she'd dare say she was warming up to the idiot.

Ayumi laughed at the way Youta tried to lick ice cream off the bridge of his nose, then she glanced at the television display lighting up the store window as they passed. The local news station, playing footage of what looked like a convenience store taped off with yellow. She paused, waited for the Headline to go from "National Donut Day" to something more menacing. The suspected trafficking case was still cold for the moment. Sato and Takagi had been unable to help, had never even heard of the case before she'd brought it up. She was left with little challenge, and a small mystery to quench her thirst was just the thing she needed; the local news did not disappoint.

Kidnappings, so far there had been three of them, one for each month of the new semester. All girls, kidnapped from campus as far as last known witnesses could tell. They each turned up seemingly at random, one at the school's pool, another at the cafe, this one at a convenience store. They were each beaten within inches of their lives, burned, shocked, cut, but it was all done with some form of precision (if she was right about the markings she saw in one photograph). The oddest thing, the woman on the screen narrated, was the inexplicable amnesia each girl had. None had a memory of being kidnapped, nor their time in captivity or kidnapper. It was as though their memories had been erased the way one erases footage from a camera, unnerving to say the least when the human brain was involved. Ayumi frowned and took a contemplative lick of her ice cream.

"Ah, don't worry about all that kidnapping stuff," Youta raised a naked arm, other hand pressing his sleeve up until his bare muscles (of which, she would admit, he had plenty) for the whole street to see. He gave her a wink and a boisterous grin, boyish in nature and cocky. "Nobody's gonna take you while I'm around!" Most men, they'd be joking, and some men, like Genta, would be barking about what they'd sooner cower from. Not Youta, she could tell. He was too genuine, too proud and believed himself much too capable to fear much of anything. She couldn't help herself, she giggled.

"Thank you, Youta-kun, but I'll be just fine!" She waved a dismissive hand his way as she passed him. "One white knight is more than enough…"

She couldn't see the way he watched her behind her back, the tender manner in which his brows creased, or the disquiet settling in his eyes.

* * *

The library was quiet at night. University students rarely spent time in its great halls studying on the weekends, and even those dutiful enough were kicked out minutes before the sun began to set. She knew some student librarians stuck around, but there were so few in a building with so many floors. Himura, truly, was a school to behold. For the night though, she would be spending her time scouring the shelves, as there would be plenty of time to stare in awe, later.

The second floor overlooked the first floor on a balcony, green carpeted steps leading up with golden accents and chocolate rails that adorned the railings like artsy fences scaling the outlook. There was another staircase to her right, leading to the third floor, but the second floor's closest wall, filled window to hall with books, was her target. She padded up the staircase with a careful hand at the rail, steps light and slow to avoid detection- theoretically. She just needed to look at a few items, that's all. She wasn't taking anything. She glanced from right to left and bolted (on the tips of her toes) over to the shelf where the recent magazines were. The one from the top, she snatched it and flipped it open on the table behind her.

The articles didn't have much more than the news story did, but it had pictures. Every girl had blue eyes, light, pretty, like polished angelite. They were all eighteen, new to university like she was, though their backgrounds differed. None of them seemed to have gone to high school in the same area, but they all had the same skin tone with some variations in tan. None of them had any family around, maybe that was the key? Ayumi shook her head. No, she didn't have enough information to go there yet. _It would help if I knew exactly what was being done to them. If I could get into the hospital…_

There was a creak in the wood; Ayumi jumped.

A girl with two braided pigtails leveled her with an even stare despite the proximity of Ayumi's pepper spray posed inches from her face. Hands on her hips, she raised one to her head with a sigh. "Yoshida-san, what do you think you're doing?"

"Chihiro-chan!"

She readjusted her round glasses with one finger, then waltzed by on feather-light feet. One hand slammed down on the table as Chihiro read over the open page, tossing one ribboned pigtail over her shoulder. Ayumi stood by, awkwardly, uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot and twiddling her thumbs. "I- I was just looking-!"

"At the kidnapping case?"

"Just in case!"

Chihiro watched her, one eye glazed over in the light of the window, the other watching her from the other side of her glasses with contemplation. Ayumi did her best to stand her ground, unsure if a librarian was obligated to report her trespassing to the school. That would be quite the way to end her first semester, she had to admit. Going back to Tokyo with her hopes of moving on, dashed before she had the chance to solve as much as one case. She gave Chihiro her best please-don't-get-me-expelled smile. Chihiro took a deep breath. "You have nothing to worry about, Yoshida-san. The girls this creep is going after are all major loners."

Ayumi, still somewhat unsteady from the generous bout of adrenaline processing in her system, approached the table to point at the headline, Third Kidnapping This Semester. "That's nothing new. Most kidnappers go for easy targets. Girls new to the school and unfamiliar with the area are less likely to have friends."

"That's not all, you know. All of these girls had prior write-ups for misconduct."

"What?"

Chirhio pointed to the first girl, then the next, and the last. "This one punched a guy in the face first week. This one was suspended for a whole month after she got caught bullying some girl. This one cheated our second exam week." Chihiro folded the newspaper into the neat square she'd pulled it in, fingers moving with such grace that Ayumi took a moment to notice how few paper cuts she had for somebody who worked vigorously with textbooks and novels. "Besides, you don't have to worry anyway, Yoshida-san," Their eyes met as Chihiro made one last vertical fold.

Ayumi watched her, patiently. Some part of her worried that this was the moment the mallet would fall, that Chihiro would tell her she was reporting her to the campus heads, that she'd have to fight to stay in a university she'd worked so hard to get into.

Chihiro placed the newspaper back on the shelf, turning to her with a red-cheeked pout, and a side-eye that could kill. "No kidnapper would dare take somebody surrounded by admirers seven days a week."

Ayumi's cheeks lit up, and she hurried to deny, deny, deny.

* * *

She knew she was groaning a lot, perhaps the measure would be more than that of a bearable amount, but she was tired. Despite hounding and bugging and, in one case, jumping out from behind a tree and startling, the local police about the hospital the kidnapped girls resided in, she'd come back with hands so empty she swore the skin had been scraped off. They'd been kind enough to give her some details- internal bleeding, burns to the scalp, lots of scarred tissue, and yet no trauma to the cranium (as far as x-rays could tell). They wouldn't let Ayumi see them, talk to them, no matter how desperately she pleaded (though they let her know, when she grew distraught, that the girls were expected to make a full recovery- which helped, it helped a lot). A lesser girl, or maybe just a girl a few years greener, might have stooped to crying. But Ayumi was a woman now, and no way was a case going to frustrate her to tears. So instead, she'd toss and turn at night and grumble all morning.

"Oi, oi, Ayumi-chan," Katashi nudged her with his arm. "You're annoying. What's with all the unattractive moaning?"

She perked up, unintentionally raising a hand to her lips. "Unattractive?"

"Yeah, you kinda sound like a hungry mountain lion!" Youta's warm smile usually helped, but she was on the receiving end of his taunts this time, and dammit if she didn't feel like making the jerks carry her to class.

"It's nothing, I just didn't sleep well."

"Yeah," Youta taunted on. "What kept you up? The evil witch of Himura stealing your youth?"

"Cut it out! I'm already losing sleep! I don't need to be scared out of bed!"

"Hah hah! Look at your face! You don't think the Witch exists do you?"

"What witch? Stop making things up!"

The group of three passed by the store once more, where the TV display was alive and blaring, painting the screen with cross tape and blue headlines. Katashi watched it as they passed, eyes narrowing as blue and yellow seemed to twist and fall into misshapen hues, fading until the screen was red.


	3. Not Her

Thanks for reading everyone!

I know those of you reading are eager for more canon characters to show up. In the meantime, I've posted three playlists with some code and evidence for you to decipher! Ayumi's Playlist, Katashi's Playlist, and The Jisatsu Experiment Playlist. You can find them on my tumblr at iamwhelmed

post/188356540429/the-jisatsu-experiment-ayumis-playlist

post/188346556479/the-jisatsu-experiment-katashis-playlist

post/188268714474/the-jisatsu-experiment-playlist

Happy hunting, everyone ;) If you take a crack at my codes, I'd love to hear what you got.

* * *

It was dark, so late at night that the students bustling about were tired, drunk, maybe both. Either way, too preoccupied with getting home, hitting bed, propositioning smarter students to do their homework- too preoccupied to notice him or the woman slung over his shoulder. She was young, and feeble, and he'd known before the bruises and the cuts and the burns that she wasn't who they were looking for. No, her eyes were too aqua and her hair was too yellow to be the girl he remembered, but he kept that to himself. He flung her frail bones over the grassy hill, watched her limp arms splay like an angel and legs knock like a tired bow, and he sighed. He'd done this so many times before, and he wondered if there had ever been enough humanity in him to feel something when his bloodied hands left another mark on another soul. She was innocent, so innocent, just like the rest, and they were good souls who would never be the same, but they weren't her. They could never be her. Nobody could ever be her, not with those eyes and those hands and that voice he remembered, that stuck to the back of his mind like tar and ate away at his obedience. This girl, the latest, she was never the one, but she'd been good. He'd seen it in her eyes as he watched that quack stick nails in her fingers; dumping her body in the park seemed only fitting for a girl with blighted virtue. Her chest rose and sank in shallow breaths, and he watched her for a moment, wondering if he could remember how the real thing looked while she slept.

His phone buzzed, and he shook his hand of gore before he checked it. Another name, another girl, another fake, another order, this one named "Katou"; he pursed his lips and glanced at the martyr before her, pondering the potentiality of The Good One ever unearthing his plight. If he did his job, the one no soul but himself had granted him, then she never would. This girl, she was another fake, as would be the next.

* * *

The bookstore was new and full, and small but colorful. Takumi's eyes lit up as they walked through the door, like saucers filled with purple paint. She'd have giggled at him had the cafe's menu not caught her attention- so many parfaits with cute bunny faces and mouses with whiskers. Ayumi was in heaven, she had to be. She raised a cautious finger to wipe at the drool she hoped wasn't lining her chin. Katashi and Youta, who stood a few inches behind her, were not as amused, Katashi staring straight ahead like his determining stare would change the rows of american-imported comic books and manga before him, and Youta, whos head was bouncing around, looking for all the world like a confused bobble head. Katashi mumbled "Oi, Ayumi-chan. When you said your friend wanted to go shopping…"

Youta picked up the back end: "...We thought you meant we were going to the mall."

Ayumi glanced over her shoulder, waving an apologetic hand. "Sorry, Takumi-kun has wanted to go here since the semester started, and if we'd gone together, well…" Takumi, who was no more cognizant of their conversation than he was of the other wandering students he was barreling over, was already stalking the aisles for a hunt. She wasn't sure if he was looking for a specific manga, or genre, but the looks on the faces of inconvenienced customers was worth the mystery.

Youta scoffed, "What?"

Akiko, who had trailed towards the end for a good portion of their trip to the bookstore, elbowed him as she strutted by. "It would look like they were on a date, stupid!"

"What? Who cares?" Youta turned his attention to Ayumi, who was raising her hands in defense. "We go out together all the time!" He glanced at Akiko. "Tell them, Nakashima!"

Akiko, who was more than used to dealing with Youta, rolled her eyes, turned her fixed attention to him, and pointed in the direction of the cafe with her thumb. Youta glanced, finding that Ayumi had already departed from the conversation and was ordering as much as her stomach could handle at the register. "OI!"

Akiko shrugged and ambled forward, dismissing Youta with a wave of her hand. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, a boy who doesn't know the first thing about girls…" Youta swung back around and began squabbling with Akiko, about this and that, this being nothing to do with dates and that being nothing to do with girls. Katashi observed from a safe distance with a somewhat irritated level of amusement, thinking to himself that the situation seemed entirely too annoyingly familiar.

There were so many things she wanted order- small lemon cakes and strawberry pastries and macaroons with small polka dots- but she'd managed to gather her self-restraint and settle for a parfait with a kitty's face on it and a small mocha coffee, of which the cafe had affectionately dubbed The Chocolate Savior. She'd ordered with stars in her eyes and the barista had laughed at her enthusiasm and took her order with a smile. The order would take five to ten minutes, and she'd decided to scan the rest of the menu as she waited. Other coffees and teas were for sale, some with bakery tastes like vanilla, and others with summery seasonal hints like orange and lemon. It all looked amazing, and her mind was running wild with what it all would taste like. It was amid her fantasizing that her ears caught the tail end of the playing news segment: "- victim found in Himura Knights Park. Fujioka Yumi is currently in emergency care and is expected to make a full recovery." She sometimes wondered if the rest of the detective boys had the sneaking, constant urge to explore and examine promising cases, and she often times came to the conclusion that they presumably did. Those were times like the current moment, where she tasted the possibility of a case on her tongue, and she had the urge to reach for her badge despite the distance. She edged closer to the screen behind the bar, inching to her left, too entranced to realize there was somebody behind her. They bumped hips, and there was a wave of wet, brown, hot molten running down her legs and running down his pants. She jumped at the collision. "Sor-ry-"

"You really should be practicing your english. We're a quarter of the way through the first semester and your accent is as horrid as it was the first week."

Ayumi's guilt somewhat subsided. "Ah, Sata-san…"

Sata glanced at her the way he always did: brown, judging eyes, brows pinching in what appeared to her deducing mind as disgust. She gestured to his coffee: "You should mind your surroundings, Yoshida-san. I'd hate for you to bump into somebody less forgiving than I."

"Less forgiving, huh?"

He nods. "A more uncouth man may suggest more repayment than a new coffee."

"If that's your way of asking for another coffee, Sata-san, you could have just asked…"

She turned around, ordered him another coffee, told the barista that he wanted it black but with three servings of sugar; he was surprised that she knew, but she waved that off.

"Actually, what are you doing here, Sata-san? I wouldn't have thought you'd hang out in a place like this."

To this question, he gestured to the cafe. "It's the only place on campus selling coffee worth its price." She knew from experience that Sata-san was very particular, so she accepted that explanation.

"So you don't have any interest in the bookstore itself?"

Sata scoffed, giving the life-size cutout of Goku, which sat posing with its fists up in a bright corner, a dirty look. "I'd never waste my time on such drivel," the way he looked at her spoke of contemplation, perhaps consideration or reverence as he said "I would have thought you were above tripe yourself, Yoshida-san."

"A-Ah! I mean, of c-course I don't read manga anymore, I-!"

"Ayumi-chan!" Takumi chose that exact moment to emerge from the jungle that was the manga section. "I found the new Kamen Yaiba! The mangaka came out of hiatus!"

It was silly, and a testament to how little she'd grown since her grade school days, but her heart slipped. "Really? It's been five years!"

"I know! But it's here! I found it!"

There was a cough, and she turned to see Sata clearing his throat, one cocked eyebrow signaling that she was unlikely to ever gain his respect back. She smiled, sheepishly, and rubbed her arm.

She invited Sata to join her and her friends; at the end of the day, Sata seemed like a good man. Arrogant as all hell, but good. She enjoyed talking to him. They approached the table as another girl walked by, a girl that caught Akiko's attention. Sh'ed been in the throws of an argument with Takumi, who was passionate about Kamen Yaiba's newest love interest, a buxom woman with blonde hair and big, expressive eyes. Her waist was small, and despite the reality that Akiko herself had seen women on campus with breasts so swollen and thighs so firm, she reacted in dismissal; she didn't look like that, and Takumi expecting women to look like that was… it was ridiculous, it had to be. Ayumi would have understood where she was coming from, so she grasped blindly at the first sight of light brown and eyes of turkish blue; she reached for her arm, took it in one hand and said "Tell him, Ayumi-chan!"

The girl, with chestnut hair and her turkish eyes, waved and said: "I'm sorry, my name is Jun!"

"Akiko-chan!" Ayumi and Sata carried their pace, and Akiko's registering eyes met hers. She blinked, then turned to the stranger with red cheeks and apologized. Jun smiled, waved her off, said that she understood. Looking at the two of them, Jun's face was rounder than Ayumi's, though their eyes held that same hopeful color. They stood at the same height, possibly same age, though Jun's build was larger, more fit, tougher than Ayumi's and thicker at the shoulders. Akiko said something along the lines of "you look just like her," to which Ayumi and Jun laughed, and Jun parted from their table with a wave.

Katashi took a moment to glance up from his chosen comic, a manga adaption of Sherlock Holmes, and looked her over for a moment. "You're covered in coffee, Ayumi-chan?"she looked down at her skirt, once white and frilled and puffy, to find half of it sagged as she stood, covered in an ombre of brown as though she'd plopped her end down in the dirt and sat there for a moment in the rain. She blushed: "Ah! It's my fault! I spilled Sata-san's coffee and-!" Sata clicked his tongue, setting his coffee down at the table to strip his shoulder of his sweater. He waited for no permission as he wrapped the arms around her waist, tying the sleeves in a tight knot, and finishing the tie with a large bow. His sleeves were long, after all, and much too big for her hips. Katashi and Youta's faces grew alarmed and indignant, though Akiko's reflected only bemusement. Ayumi looked to Sata, and he shrugged her hesitation off with the practice of a gentleman.

"You've paid your penance for spilling my coffee. I'd be a poor gentleman to let you continue on so wantonly."

Akiko squealed, bounding forward to set her anxious hands at Ayumi's shoulders. "Ayumi-chan! You have to introduce me if you're going to entertain such a handsome suitor!" Ayumi, had she been pink before, was titian.

"H-He's not my-!"

Sata extended a hand, as any european gentleman would do, and took Akiko's between his fingers. He shook gently, but with purpose. "I'm Yoshida-san's English tutor, Sata Yori." Akiko's shake was more enthusiastic, eyes lighting up the way a celebrity's glowed as the cameras flickered outside the limousine on a red carpet. The pupils of her eyes resembled the pulse of a racing heart, and the smile on her face emulated only the purest of her motives.

Katashi and Youta, their eyes twitched.

Sata peeped at Ayumi, despite his current preoccupancy. He seemed relatively unbothered, as though he dealt with the wide-eyed soulful eyes looking his way millions of times before "Your other friends, Yoshida-san?"

"Ah, right! This is Sasaki Katashi-kun," Katashi leveled Sata with an openly contentious glower "and this is Oshiro Youta-kun!" Youta's eyes were the aesthetic equivalent of a dagger, sharpened and ready to draw blood. Sata paid no mind to either scowl. "And this is-"

Takumi glanced at his watch: "Ah, it's 3:00 already."

Sata's eyes widened, and he glanced down at his wrist where his Rolex sat unperturbed by the mess of early afternoon coffee. "Ah, 3:00? I nearly forgot." He turned to her, sincerely apologetic, perhaps the most she'd seen in him since they'd began their tutoring sessions. "I'm sorry, Yoshida-san, I have a prior engagement that seems to have slipped my mind. I will call you later, we can set up our next session."

He waved and left, as simple going as he'd simply come. Katashi snorted and Youta pouted. "You really hang out with that jerk?" Akiko glared at both of them.

Ayumi laughed, awkwardly, and waved a dismissive hand. "No! Really, he's just my tutor!"

Takumi paid the conversation no mind and continued on as if Sata had never been there; he read the Kamen Yaiba volume.

* * *

This case was starting to bother Ayumi. She'd taken it upon herself to look at the articles, the papers and news letters and campus warning texts. There didn't appear to be one location, each girl was kidnapped in a different place: one at the student center, one at the campus bookstore, and one at the food court. And those were assumptions made by the investigators, as the girls couldn't remember where they'd been kidnapped, much less their scars. None of the three remembered what they'd been doing hours before, or their day's lectures or their attacker's face. It was as though their minds had been skillfully and artistically erased, like a security camera's tape is erased. They knew their names, their friends, their home, their lives- but the month they'd each been gone, no; no address, no memories, no names.

Ayumi hummed, contemplatively stacking one newspaper atop another. No readings had rendered any results or clues, but she was nothing if not stubborn, so she continued on. She reached for another campus newsletter amid the stack she'd left unread; her foot, the tips of her toes, hit something solid. Distracted, disorganized, she bent down to pick the object up.

It was a small box, an old container meant for a pair of shoes her mother had bought her at age seven, but she'd forgotten she'd stashed it under her desk. Pensively, she plucked the box from her feet and pried it open. She knew well what sat in the box- letters upon letters, unsent and unopened, none with so much as a stamp. They were all to Conan-kun, letters she'd written over the years as she and the rest of the detective boys hit milemarks: Graduating grade school, junior high, solving their first case without Shinichi or Haibara- Miyano- even her first love letter on White Day despite no recipient on Valentine's Day. She found it funny, not in a laughable way, that she remembered every word. From the age of eight to the age of eighteen, she knew by heart every soul-dripping, heart-ripping, frustrating word she wrote. Every word Conan would never read, every monumental goalpost she and Mistuhiko and Genta had passed since he'd made the decision to leave their lives. She couldn't help but let her wind wander as she read her own handiwork- would Conan-kun respect where she was today? Would Conan-kun wait around like she was for a case? She bit the inside of her lip, allowing herself a moment of mourning.

Maybe Conan-kun would never see those letters, but she'd always remember writing them.

* * *

"No."

He'd said it a handful of time now, each one no more convincing than the first. Ayumi batted her eyelashes. "Please?"

"No way," Katashi glared down at her, and she supposed the height difference should have discouraged her, but it didn't. Katashi was no more dangerous than a fly, and they both knew it. "I'm not sneaking you confidential files!" It was, perhaps, a little underhanded. Katashi's father was on the police force, and he was the man in charge of the kidnapping case, but she was desperate. Her natural curiosity and exploratory habits needed to be sated, and she needed to know that she was capable of establishing a name for herself without the rest of the league backing her; this kidnapping case was imperative, and Sasaki-san was the only man she knew capable of giving her the information she needed to proceed. Katashi brushed away the hand she'd set on his arm. "Let the police handle it, or a private detective."

Ayumi pouted. "Like Mouri Kogoro?"

Katashi snorted, and she wasn't sure why. "I know you used to run around solving cases, Ayumi-chan, but this is dangerous. Let somebody else handle it." She knew he wasn't meaning to insult her, but she certainly felt the cold sting of scorn. After all, she'd handled plenty of cases on her own when she was still in Tokyo, with or without the rest of the Detective Boys. She turned to look ahead, turning contemplative; she hadn't heard from any of the league in awhile. She knew Mitsuhiko and Genta had stayed in Tokyo, though their universities had led them to separate ends of the city. It'd been weeks since they'd spoken. Last she'd heard, Genta was loving his classes, learning knife tricks every day and perfecting his eel and rice recipe. Mitsuhiko was taking charge of his university's chemistry club, and last she heard, a few of the club members were smitten (in Mitsuhiko's roommate's words, not his). She wondered if Genta's girlfriend Rinka-chan had managed to nail the art of edible glass yet, or if Mitsuhiko had managed to get along with that biology professor he butted heads with. Most of all, she wondered if Miyano had contacted them, or Shinichi-niisan. She certainly hadn't heard anything from either of them, but she supposed they were both busy adults with demanding lifestyles. She frowned and played with the strap of her messenger bag.

Katashi looked at her, really looked at her, the way only a man observes a sad woman, and sighed. "I'm sure Dad has a few cases to look into if you're really that-"

She'd grabbed him by the wrist and bolted for the police station before he could get the last word out. Sure, he made a noise, one that may signal discontent, but he followed her anyway; she knew he would.

* * *

Katashi's father, Sasaki-keiji, was a tall man who looked not the least related to Katashi. His face was slim and his lip was covered in a thick layer of facial hair. His shoulders were broad where Katashi's were slimmer, and his arms were muscled and fit. He stood a few inches taller, and his posture was confident, but he hardly carried himself in the borderline arrogant way Katashi did. Both men, she had to admit, were more attractive than men in their line of work had any right to be (that may have been her bias talking). She glanced from one man to the other, then contemplated what Katashi's mother may have looked like, if perhaps he resembled the maternal side more than the fraternal side. They approached Sasaki-keiji and Ayumi introduced herself, to which he greeted her with open arms, a wide smile inching from one side of his unfamiliar face to the other. "Ah, I've heard about you, Yoshida-san! A pupil of the Great Mouri Kogoro and Kudo Shinichi!" Katashi flinched, though Ayumi wasn't sure why.

"Not important."

"Sure it is!" Sasaki slapped his son on the back, startling him into a small coughing fit. "Kudo himself rang me up and told me you were on your way!"

Despite the urge, she couldn't fight the fire that bloomed like roses under the skin of her cheeks. "H-He did?"

Sasaki nodded as Katashi pulled away from him, cooly brushing his arm off of his shoulders. Sasaki didn't seem to notice. "Sure! Told me to keep an eye on you. Doesn't want you getting into any trouble." Of course he did. Ayumi pouted, and Katashi stuck his hands in his pocket, glancing away. If he was bothered by his son's cold posture, he didn't show it. Sasaki continued on to say "That said, I've been waiting for you to drop by since my son here mentioned you!"

Ayumi glanced to Katashi, unaware that she'd made quite that impression on him when he'd first helped her carry her books to class. His face, which had been collected and aloof before, had turned several shades of russet. He gestured wildly with his hands, flailing incoherently to suggest to his father that he should _shut up_. Sasaki-keiji gained no such hint. "Haven't seen him smile so big since we got him! Came home and told us he ran into an old friend!" Ah, that puzzled her. Ayumi raised an eyebrow.

"Old friend?"

Katashi turned to her, hands anxiously, pensively trying to control what she was thinking by waving the insinuation off. "I told him you were _like_ an old friend! Like!" The steam burned in waves from his ears, but the largest bout seemed to pass as she asked no probing questions. He turned to his father, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staring the older man down like the culprit of a case had strayed into the room right in front of him. She found it odd, but she made no comment. "Will you please just give us a case, old man?"

Ayumi probed him with a nudge to the arm. "Us?"

Katashi's cheeks burned pink, and he scratched at his nose and glanced away, as though the mere sight of her inquisitive face would be enough to blow his haughty facade right out of the water. "That old bastard has a point. You shouldn't be doing this alone." He dared a glance at her, right from under his eyelashes, and she found her face, too, was burning flush. She smiled at him, genuinely, warmly, with all of the gratefulness she was feeling in her heart right then.

"Thank you, Katashi!"

His face grew coral, and he stuck his nose in the air, away from her.

Sasaki-keiji laughed, rambunctiously, the kind of jolly laugh she'd imagined hearing from Santa when she was small, and unwise, and trusting. He was like that, she could tell, a man who always smiled, who found the light despite the inherent darkness of his line of work. She didn't know Katashi's mother, but she could understand what she saw in him, right then. He slapped his desk, sending a few papers in one manila folder floating lackadaisical in the air. She had a feeling it was a closed case, if she were to draw conclusions from his nonchalance. "We don't have any cases right now, at least, none that Kudo-san would want me handing off to you, but I'll let you two know when one comes in. On Himura campus, there always seems to be something new to investigate."


End file.
